Your Strokes:
John Daly Serve

Part 2

Analyzed by John Yandell

In the first half of our analysis of John's serve (Click Here), we looked at the technical motion on his first serve. But when John sent in his video he specifically requested that we think about his motion as it applied in doubles.

So we'll go into two interesting issues here that relate to that. The first is some further reflection on the relationship between stance and the movement to the net. The second is the "kick" serve, and how it relates not only to the second delivery, but also how it can relate to the first, especially in doubles.

Both of these issues are complex and probably warrant their own extended discussions, (and maybe that'll happen in other articles in the future) but for now we can raise some questions and make some general points. So John, it might be a little more than you bargained for, but here we go.

When John sent in his video, there were examples of him using both a platform and an extreme pinpoint stance. In the first article I tried to steer him toward the platform for a number of reasons. These are technical and related to the quality of the ball you can produce and specifically how I think the stance relates to leg drive, body rotation, and simplicity and ease of execution. And I'll stay with that.

But let me tell a story that explains why the issue deserves more analysis. Recently I had the pleasure of spending a few days with Jim Thomas, a former All-American from Stanford, currently ranked #35 in the world in doubles, who usually teams with Paul Goldstein. Last February the Tennisplayer staff had a lot of fun cheering Jim and Paul on at the SAP Open in San Jose, where they went to the final, and just about took out Jonas Bjorkman and his partner, the legendary gray panther, Mr. John McEnroe, losing a super tiebreaker for the third set in a really dramatic and entertaining match.

I spent time with Jim last year before the SAP, and last month he was back in town to work on his serve again. We'll be going into the details of the transformation I think he has achieved over the last couple of years in a future Your Strokes article. But for now let me say that, yes, one of the first changes he made was from a pinpoint to a platform stance.

Working with Jim I found, to say the least, that he is a very acute and methodical student of the game. I learn a lot everytime we sit down to talk about the serve. And this time we reexamined the whole stance issue, particularly how it may affect movement to the net, apart from the actual biomechanics of ball striking. This is obviously an important issue for Jim since he has a big serve, plays doubles, and tries to serve and volley as much, and as effectively, as possible. The basic question we addressed was when you serve and volley are there are the tradeoffs between the stances and and how quickly you get to the net?

In a well known quantitative study, the Australian biomechanist Bruce Elliott found that players with pinpoint stances tended to generate more upward thrust, but players with platforms actually landed further in the court. And I am certainly sure that was true for Bruce's sample subjects. But these were not tour players, and Bruce compared the benefits of the stances by having the same players serve both ways.

In the Myth of the Pinpoint article, I showed that this result didn't really correlate with what we saw in the video for most pro servers. (Click Here) Some of the players with pinpoints like Greg Rusedski, barely made it up in the air. Furthermore, they didn't land that far inside the court either. Other pinpoint guys got way into the court like Philippoussis, but weren't serve and volleyers.

Meanwhile a platform player like Pete Sampras got up in the air further than Rusedski. He also landed further out in the court, but less than Philippoussis. The platform guy with the most air who landed furthest in the court was Agassi, but he never came in behind his serve. Interestingly, Justine Henin-Hardenne, one of the few women with a platform, also got a lot of air and landed further inside the court than many of the men.

Andy Roddick with that modified, close set platform stance (Click Here) also gets way in the court, but lands off balance so that his position can actually be a liability in the rare event of a hard, deep return down the middle. I think that is also a bit of a problem at times for Justine. You get the idea. There don't seem to be any simple correlations between stance, landing, and style of play.

What the work with Jim taught me, however, was that the landing alone didn't show the whole picture of how the stances related to forward movement into the court, and therefore the possible relevance of the stances for serve and volley.

For example when we went back to the Rusedski footage we saw that although he barely lands in the court, and sometimes lands partially on the baseline, he actually tends to get in closer to the net for the first volley on many balls than a platform player like Sampras or Roger Federer.

So how is that possible? .

Rusedski lands on the front foot just like the platform servers, but it does appear on the whole that he gets somewhat further in before his split, making a first volley a couple of feet or so closer to the service line. And this fits with what some coaches have argued all along, regardless of Bruce's study, that the pinpoint is the preferred serve and volley stance.

Sampras lands on his left front foot, and then usually takes one big cross step with his right foot, then takes the split step. That usually puts his first volley about half way between the baseline and the service line, although he does gets closer on some balls.Rusedski takes a full extra cross step before the split compared to Pete. Maybe he can do that because he barely gets up in the air, lands on balance and has more time

So that seemed interesting, but then Jim and I looked at the sequences of Richard Krajicek from the Stroke Archive, and that took it to a whole new level. Krajicek is also a pinpoint guy, but Krajicek seems to get more push from the back foot than players like Rusedski or Philippoussis. It's more like Roddick, even though he slides his foot up first prior to the launch. In fact he seems to have more back foot push than Andy. You can tell that he is pushing with both feet because the feet are leaving the court at the same time.

But the most amazing thing was that Krajicek frequently lands what looks like about 3 feet inside the court, the furthest of any player I've ever filmed (although like the other players there is a range, and he doesn't always hit the same spot.) Still he's way further in on most balls. Not only that, Krajicek also gets at least two big cross steps like Rusedski, and sometimes he gets three or even four.

Now this is all from one match I filmed at Indian Wells, and it appears his opponent was hitting some weak floating returns that let Richard really close the net, but still, it's amazing when you look at multiple sequences and compare them to the other players.

So how does that play into our platform verss pinpoint discussion? Like I said, I think the issue is interesting and I've learned a lot just by looking into it, but it's very difficult to say that you see a clear advantage to the pinpoint here.

Bruce Elliott had the right idea. What you really need to settle it once and for all is super controlled conditions. The same players hitting the same serves with both stances, all serving and volleying, and facing the exact same returns. That is never going to happen and even the idea of one player mastering both stances is I think also highly suspect.

One other thing to think about is the sheer physicality of the players. Rusedski is about 6'4" with long legs. Krajicek is even taller and his legs also seem noticeably longer than Greg's. So maybe they can both take longer steps and that explains it. Or maybe they just work harder to take those steps. In the sequences there is a real urgency to Krajicek's movement.

That's different than Pete, who in comparison, seems more deliberate or even sometimes slightly causal going in, at least in the hardcourt footage we have to study. So again, you may not be comparing apples to oranges, but you might be comparing a Fuji apple to a Red Delicious.

But let's even assume that it really is true. That if you really push with both feet you can get further into the court, and that somehow that allows you to take that extra step, or even two. What does that mean for a player like John or all players that want to serve and volley at a range of NTRP levels? What if anything does that mean for a player like John who wants to play serve and volley in doubles? Is it possible he could get a better start to the net with the pinpoint?

If we look at the two variations in stance that he sent in, we can see that also gets a discernable distance further in with his pinpoint. If you compare the position of the back foot, he's probably about a foot more inside the baseline. So maybe there is an advantage for John?

Maybe, but I think there are some other factors to consider. The first question would be since John and most NTRP players aren't hitting 130mph serves, and their opponents are not hitting 95mph returns, how does this affect everything? Especially the timing of the movement and the first volley. In other words, is that potential one extra foot step really the key, and is it really the difference in determining the difficulty of the first volley and your ability to execute it? I don't think so. I think this has more to do with the type and effectiveness of the serve.

I think the answer is that most players who play recreational serve and volley and NTRP tennis, if they work hard, don't have to worry about hitting the first volley half way between the baseline and the net. They are going to gain that extra step or two or three simply because they don't hit the ball at pro velocities and that means they have more time. When I watch club tennis the errors are in the patterns of the steps, and the technical execution of the volleys.

And then there is this related question: what type of serve should club and NTRP players actually be hitting when they do try to serve and volley? For any server and any level, there is always a speed versus spin continuum. Changing the balance between speed and spin can have a huge effect on the success rate in serve and volley tennis, and that is particularly true at lower levels.

A few years ago when I was playing Norcal senior tennis, I also played a bunch of 4.5 tournaments (and I am proud to say I did win two of them, seven matches each, and that was not an easy accomplishment, thanks). Against a new opponent I usually did a test in my first service game or two. I'd hit a few hard kick serves to his backhand, especially in the ad court and just observe what happened.

Often I found that the player couldn't control the return and I could go in and get relatively easy, high first volleys and could take control of the point. If my opponent never adjusted, I would just keep doing it. Or if he did, then I would cut back, but still mix the tactic over the course of the match. If it yielded just a few points here and there, that was the difference in a lot of my matches, especially ones that were otherwise tough baseline struggles.

What I lot of players don't realize is that you can't always get the type of returns you want hitting you're "best" serve, what most people think of as their hardest, flattest delivery.

We've talked in the past about this issue in reference to Sampras himself, and how he pulled back on sheer speed and to hit those unreturnable heavy balls with the highest topspin component of any server we've studied. That serve produced a lot of free points but it also set him up for the serve and volley. (Click Here.) And unless you can serve in a way that generates relatively high percentage first volleys, it's really tough to serve and volley at any level, from the pros on down.

Which brings us to John's second serve. It's one hell of a kick! If you look at the ball position from the front view, he looks further to his left than Pete Sampras. And yeah, that's probably too far, maybe even way too far. On this view, the ball also looks too far behind, because he actually seems to jump back slightly at the landing.

But, on the some of the rear views, the position is much more reasonable and his movement through the landing is continuous and slightly forward. S what I am going to suggest is that John experiment with that left to right ball position and the spin/speed trade off on his first serve. But also that he also be careful to keep the contact point just slightly in front of his body.

In reality I think everyone should have 3 variations of this serve. A relatively flat first serve, but one with the ball far enough left to have some topspin. A kick second serve with the ball further left maybe at the edge of the head or even a little further left. And one in between. And the question is, which of these yields the easiest first volley. And that answer, since none of us are Pete Sampras, will vary by opponent. The only way to find out? Right. Experiment with the variations on a given day against a given player.

Two other related points I'd like to suggest to John. If you look at his arm at contact it's not quite straight at the elbow. That suggests he needs a little more time to extend all the way. And that requires a slightly higher toss. With a higher toss, he could also experiment with a little deeper knee bend and that might also produce a landing a little further inside the court.

So all this leads me back to the motion. It's all an argument for putting motion ahead of movement. And what my experience shows is that some variation of the platform stance is what best allows players to develop and use these variations. It wasn't that I went into coaching with the idea that the platform had advantages. That idea came from my experiences.

With the platform I think it's just a little easier and more natural to have that left ball position, and to use the legs and the torso rotation to help generate both speed and spin. I think you see that in the pros, and it's even truer at the NTRP level.

Most recently that's been the result with the work with tour players Jeff Salzenstein and Paul Goldstein, and now Jim Thomas. And Jim despite all our fascinating study, decided that on balance he was sticking with the platform, because of the simplicity of the motion and the quality of the ball it delivered. Is he really giving up something on the serve and volley? Well, Krajicek won a Wimbledon title, (and so did Stefan Edberg, another pinpoint guy) but two serve and volley players who did pretty well there with platform stances were Pete Sampras and John McEnroe.

So we've come all the way around a complicated and fascinating issue, to get back to basically where we've started from, and I hope not too many people find all that to be superfluous. I think there are so many gray areas that's it's worth examining things from different perspectives.

The pros and cons are worth throwing out there, because as Rick Macci says in his article on Building Weapons, (Click Here) if coaches who think they know everything were really that smart, they'd realize that they don't know everything. So Richard, if you are using the password of one of our Dutch coaches and reading this article, keep doing what you are doing. John McEnroe told me personally how much he fears your serve. And Mr. John Daly, experiment with the variations and let us know how it goes in the Forum.